How the car industry could save Britain’s steel industry

Britain’s steel and car industries are intertwined like very few others. Back in the dimness of time, the British steel industry had to develop new techniques to make large steel sheets that could be bashed into large car panels for the then-newfangled unibodied cars.

And names like Pressed Steel-Fisher became sole suppliers of car bodies to some of the big names in the UK car industry, such as Rootes and Jaguar. Pressed Steel, in fact, grew to be the biggest provider of car bodies and tooling in the world in the post-WW2 era.

But its grip on the UK market has slipped in more recent times – with pressure from China and competition from alternative materials such as aluminium and carbonfibre.

China, for example, has the capacity to make more than 800 million tonnes of steel a year, compared with the UK’s 12m tonnes.

UK steel, however, is higher in quality and more suited to complex applications in modern cars design – for example, in high-strength tailored blanks and galvanised anti-corrosion coatings.

Steel has also been caught up in the general trend to offshore car parts supply. Since the 1980s, when a UK-built car typically featured at least 80% local content, various factors such as labour costs, energy costs and currency peaks have reduced that to around 30%. Only recently has it begun to climb back up to 40%.

Getting exact figures on this steel market is not that easy; the SMMT doesn’t keep those figures. And for the time being, Tata Steel is not divulging the figures.

Although some estimates put the steel content of a car at up to 65% – which includes all components, such as gears, axles, suspension parts and so on. A body-in-white - the pressed body with its ‘closures’ (doors, boot and bonnet) - is closer to 30% of the weight.

Multiply that by 1.3m steel-bodied cars built every year in the UK and the total tonnage could be just over 1.6m tonnes a year – about 13% of the UK’s total output of 12m tonnes per year.

For example, Britain’s biggest car factory, Nissan in Sunderland, makes 500,000 cars a year and uses a substantial tonnage of UK steel – half of it supplied by Port Talbot alone. The rest comes from Europe, partly because the cost of shipping form China is too high.

There is obviously a chance to increase the UK-supplied figure, but whether that’s enough to swing the financial balance in favour of UK steel mills such as Port Talbot is debatable.

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Campervan 2 April 2016

Britains decline

The current problems suffered by steel makers in the UK is just another example of why Britain is in terminal decline, just like all empires throughout history. We only import a small percentage of steel from China most of our steel imports come from Europe plus of course all the steel content of those Audis, BMWs and Mercedes we import. The UK has lost much of its petro chemical industry, aluminium smelting, coal production and now steel through imposing higher costs upon our industry than our European competitors do. Once we have lost the capability to produce any of the basic industrial products it becomes financially impossible to rebuild any such industry. All we are left with is the curse of an unaffordable welfare system with the ultimate black hole we call the NHS sucking ever increasing amounts of money out of the economy.

Norma Smellons 31 March 2016

Thank Ed and Gordon

Steel workers do seem awfully selfish. Should they not be thanking the last government for the Climate Change Act of 2009? Don't they realise that the annihilation of their livelihood, as a result of this legislation, will help our CO2 targets? And in doing so, we will single-handedly lower the temperature of the entire planet. So come on, Port Talbot: find Ed Miliband. And shake that man's hand. For he has done you all an enormous favour, apparently.

Cobnapint 31 March 2016

Proof that the world is nuts

The price of crude and steel is on the floor at the moment - yet we are all being told this is bad bad news. In reality, we should be creaming ourselves. What a great opportunity this is to start producing stuff, and moving it everywhere - make hay while the sun is shining. But no. Two of the main commodities that the human race uses for existing and progressing in the modern world are growing on trees right now - and because the Arabs can't gold leaf so many Lambos this month, or Russian ollywhatsits might be thinking twice about that respray for their super yacht's on board helicopter, the whole worlds gotta be depressed. Give me strength.

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